In collaboration with the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, this two-part panel brings together scholars, designers and industry professionals from New York who focus on gaming. It will cover the opportunities and challenges for the various academic disciplines and game professionals that make up the NYC gaming scene.

Next Wednesday, September 24th @ DCTV @ 6:00pm
@ Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV),
87 Lafayette Street between White & Walker in Chinatown, 3rd Floor
(Take the 6/N/R/Q/J/Z to Canal St. or the A/C to Canal St.)
Light Refreshments will be Served

In the face of increased media consolidation, we are witnessing an erosion of independent voices in the media landscape, the shrinking of public media resources and a lack of accountability by corporate media conglomerates to serve the people’s interest. Organizing for media justice means confronting and transforming the structural racism, economic injustice and corporate control in our media and communications systems.

At the 2008 NYC Grassroots Media Conference “Speaking Truth to Power: Media Justice in our Communities” we explored how to empower disenfranchised communities – those most affected by media injustice – to fight for transformation of the media system. But this conversation isn’t over.

Building on the ideas we shared back in March we are inviting conference attendees, social justice organizers, media makers, activists and concerned individuals to join us in a lively interactive workshop and discussion about the impact of corporate media on our communities, and how we can together advance a media justice agenda.Co-Sponsoring Organizations:
The NYC Grassroots Media Coalition (NYCGMC)www.nycgrassrootsmedia.org

BRANDING DEMOCRACY:
SIMON CRITCHLEY ON THE FAITH OF THE FAITHLESS—POLITICS AND BELIEF

Each year an inaugural lecture launches the Vera List Center for Art and Politics annual theme, defining the intellectual territory that the center will explore in public programs. This year’s theme is Branding Democracy. The lecturer introduces the theme in the broadest sense, serving as a guide to the range and richness of the topic at hand and rooting the concept within The New School’s intellectual tradition.

On Thursday, September 18, at 6:30 p.m., the inaugural lecture for 2008-09, “Democracy is a Fiction” will be offered by Simon Critchley, professor of philosophy, at The New School for Social Research and at University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom. His research focuses on the history of philosophy, literature, ethics, and politics. Critchley will discuss how democracy relies on a series of fictions, most notably the fiction of popular sovereignty as government by and for the people. He argues that such fictions serve an ultimately theological function that must be exposed and criticized. Such is one of the crucial political roles of contemporary art. Critchley will propose the idea of a supreme fiction and invoke another model of democracy closer to the anarchist tradition.

The event will take place in the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor. Admission is $8, and free to all students and New School faculty, staff, and alumni with ID.

A complementary art and design exhibition, “Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding,” will run from October 15, 2008, through January 30, 2009, at the Kellen Gallery in the Sheila Johnson Design Center, 2 West 13th Street. Co-produced by Parsons The New School for Design and the Vera List Center, this show includes video, photography, sound, sculpture, and information maps, as well as lectures, performances, and participatory events that happen in a “democratic structure” designed by British artist Liam Gillick.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, France’s “rock-star philosopher,” and Slavoj ZIZEK, the Slovanian “Elvis of cultural theory,” will scrutinize the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those of the future, as they argue for a new political and moral vision for our times and investigate the limits of tolerance.

Does the advent of capitalism cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of the neighbor? asks Zizek in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.

Are human rights Western or Universal? How is it that progressives themselves-those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism-have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes, asks Lévy in Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against New Barbarism.

NYAAPOR is pleased to offer one of our most popular workshops, designed for beginning and experienced researchers alike. This all-day seminar allows participants to learn about survey research from some of its most eminent pioneers and practitioners.

This seminar offers an inspiring look at the survey research process for students and beginning researchers. In addition, more experienced researchers will have the opportunity to learn unique insights into the process from our distinguished presenters. Comments and questions will be welcomed during each session. Lunch will be served.